What CLOC Global Institute 2025 Revealed About the Future of Legal Operations

For the last decade, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC)’s annual Global Institute has been the “Super Bowl” of the legal ops world. But after attending this year's CGI 2025 event last week in Las Vegas, there was a notable shift in tone. While still vital for networking and collaboration, the event felt less whimsical and aspirational (unless, of course, you count FloRida's performance with a surprise appearance from FlavaFlav). Instead, it felt more sober and more immediate. Simply put, legal ops professionals must harness their technological and operational expertise to drive measurable impact now.

Like all nascent professions, legal ops is maturing. Practitioners are grappling with immediate challenges and seeking practical, demonstrable solutions. I heard it in every conversation with community members at the event. 

I suspect this extends far beyond the conference, so I wanted to provide some insight into our discussions so that you, too, can drive immediate, measurable impact. 

Quality over quantity: Deeper conversations drive real progress

Attendees weren't just collecting business cards; they were engaging in substantive, meaningful discussions. The focus was on sharing repeatable strategies, proven metrics, and practical insights that delivered success. This desire for tangible, actionable knowledge signals a community focused on execution and measurable results.

I love that the legal ops community is open to sharing problems and solutions with each other. A great example was Aaron Wilkins, CFO of Human-I-T, sharing mathematical formulas to measure performance and ROI. 

This community wants to see each other succeed, so kudos to CLOC for creating a space to actualize that desire. We must continue this effort beyond the event itself so that we can make real progress in our industry and at our respective companies. 

Demonstrating value and ROI: The pressure is on

Legal ops teams now face real scrutiny to articulate their value and the return on investment for their technology purchases. The spotlight is on accountability, pushing legal ops professionals to be more strategic in their investments and implementations. So while “new technology fever” may promise the moon, scrutiny, vetting, and curation are the antidote. 

From the keynote to the floor, we agree this is the age of AI.  But how can we embrace this constantly evolving technology while proving its value and impact to corporate leadership? 

From my point of view at Docusign, we eliminate that pain for our customers by providing a complete Intelligent Agreement Management platform built on trust and innovation. Our customers don’t have the bandwidth to run a weekly RFX process in order to explore every new AI-powered “party-trick” on the market. Instead, we do that work on their behalf by validating and fine-tuning innovations for contract-specific needs so that they solve real-world challenges and drive meaningful impact. From agentic AI to biometric identification, we strive to bring the most innovative and effective innovations to our customers to help them solve key legal ops challenges across multiple lines of business. And that interdepartmental collaboration on our platform is the factor in scaling measurable ROI for legal ops teams. If you don’t have the tools to drive and measure performance across the business, you have little chance of proving your value to the C-Suite. 

AI fatigue, but steady, practical progress

Speaking of AI, the conference addressed something we’ve probably all felt recently: "AI fatigue." AI is in the news, earnings calls, and practically everywhere in both our business and personal lives. No wonder folks roll their eyes at the constant buzz. But this fatigue we’re feeling (yes, me too) doesn't diminish AI's importance. Rather, it’s the very real consequence of the changing knowledge worker paradigm. 

The keynote revealed a future where professionals manage AI agents alongside human teams. The conversation has moved beyond what’s possible to focus on what comes next. This community must leverage practical applications and seamless integrations to harness AI to solve real-world legal ops challenges. Instead of eyerolls, we need drumrolls to usher in the next wave of solutions to drive value. It’s time.

Intelligent Agreement Management takes center stage

On the trade floor this year, we saw the familiar landscape of CLM, AI contract review, legal research, and e-discovery tools. Docusign has the largest base of CLM customers. So, I hope you can share our enthusiasm for Docusign’s unique evolutionary vision for Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM). Our team showcased this end-to-end agreement management platform powered by Iris, our new AI engine, to everyone we met. We may have invented e-signature, but not once did anyone ask me about it. Like the legal ops community itself, we’ve evolved to meet the moment with IAM and Iris.

I know what you’re thinking… You just wrote about AI fatigue and now you’re talking about your AI product. What gives? 

The answer is impact. 

We are firmly in the AI era. And Iris drives impact for agreement management with contextual intelligence in how you create, commit, and manage your agreements. We proactively deliver tailored insights by integrating data from our customers' complete business processes. This involves combining diverse data sources while upholding privacy and trust. We demonstrated how IAM solves agreement challenges for companies of all sizes, staking our claim as a differentiated, strategic player in the broader legal operations technology landscape. 

If you missed us at the event, you can see how IAM supports every stage of the agreement process here.

A forward-looking community

CGI 2025 saw a legal operations community focused on strategic depth, demonstrable value, and the practical integration of advanced technologies like AI. The move to Chicago for next year's event, away from the traditional Las Vegas setting, might itself be another indicator of this shift–a profession adapting and evolving to meet the changing demands of the business world. 

As legal ops continues to mature, we need to harness innovation to drive meaningful impact and secure a vital, strategic function within our organizations. We saw the promise of what comes next for this community, and we’re looking forward to finding many more ways to connect with the legal operations community this year and beyond.